I couldn’t look away. He was so beautiful, so masculine. When he wrapped an arm around me, slid his hand down the front of my panties, I grabbed his wrist. “Wait,” I said between ragged breaths. “I still don’t understand how you’re here.”

“I told you, you summoned me.” His fingers tunneled between my legs despite my best efforts, and I gasped aloud when they dipped inside. “You always summon me. You’ve always had the power to call me whenever you want or need me, Dutch. Or haven’t you figured that out yet?”

I fought the delicious sensations spiking in my abdomen with each stroke of his fingers. Fought to grasp the meaning of his breathy words. “No, you’ve always come to me when I needed you. When I was in danger.” And he had. Growing up, he’d always been there anytime my life was threatened.

His breath fanned across my cheek, the heat emanating off him scorching as his mouth sought the pulse point at my throat. “It’s always been you.”

He was wrong. He had to be. The idea that I could summon him, that I’d always summoned him, was unfathomable. I didn’t even know what he was until very recently. I was afraid of him, in fact. He was a dark being made of smoke and shadows, and the last thing I wanted was to be in his presence. How could I have summoned him? What he proposed was impossible.

“But as long as I’m here…” He let that statement linger as he locked me against him and pushed down my bottoms and underwear in one smooth movement. Then he let the slightest grin lift one corner of his beautiful mouth, nudged my legs apart, and entered me in one long thrust. I gasped aloud, and the swirling that had begun only moments before grew to hurricane strength in an instant. I clamped one hand around his wrist at my throat, the other on to his steely bu**ocks, pulling him deeper, clawing for release.

I kept my eyes open, watching him in the mirror, studying his reaction. The slight parting of his lips. The furrowing of his brow. The fall of his lashes.

“Dutch,” he said in his smooth, deep voice, as though helpless against what he was about to do. His jaw locked together as his cl**ax neared. He lifted one of my legs onto the vanity and pushed into me, burying himself over and over, the act almost violent, coaxing me with each thrust, with each powerful stroke.

And with each stroke, the current inside me surged with more potency, his erection filling a need so deep, so visceral, it devoured every inch of my being. The raw yearning that lingered in the distance rushed forward to pool between my legs. It swelled like a tide, milking me, coaxing me ever closer.

My fingernails dug into his wrist, suddenly remembering he didn’t want to be there. Not with me. Not after what I’d done. “Reyes, wait.”

I felt it the moment it seized him, felt it quake and convulse through his body, and in an instant an explosion burst and shot through me, sending a sharp sting of pleasure ricocheting against my bones, coursing through my veins, searing my flesh with a scalding ecstasy.

And then the world came crashing in as the violence of an orgasm splitting me in two jolted me from a fitful sleep. The dying remnants of a scream echoed in the room, and I knew instantly it was my own reaction to the cl**ax. I forced myself to pause, to catch my breath, to unclench my fists from around the coffee cup that had emptied its contents in my lap. Luckily, there wasn’t much left. I put the cup on a side table, then I fell back onto the sofa and threw an arm over my forehead to wait out the familiar storm trembling through my body.

Three times in one week. Within seconds of closing my eyes, he’d be there, waiting, watching, angry and seductive.

I glanced at the clock again. The last time I’d looked, it really did say 3:35. Now it said 3:38. Three minutes. I’d closed my eyes three minutes ago.

With an exhausted sigh, I realized it was my own fault. I’d let myself drift.

Maybe this was Reyes’s way of making me pay for what I’d done. He’d always been able to leave his body, to become incorporeal and wreak all kinds of havoc on humanity. Not that he actually wreaked havoc, but he could’ve had he wanted to. Now he was stuck in his body. A minor indiscretion if you asked me, and when I bound him, a necessary one.

But now he was back to haunting my dreams. At least when he’d entered my dreams before, I actually got some sleep between rounds of hide-and-seek and tug-of-war. Now, I close my eyes for a second and he’s there in the most intense way possible. As long as I’m asleep, we’re going at it like rabbits on a bunny farm.

And the worst part of the whole thing lay in the fact that he really was pissed as hell at me. As a result, he had no desire to be there. He was angry, consumed with rage, and yet oh so passionate, like he couldn’t help himself. Like he couldn’t control the heat coursing through him, the hunger in his veins. I couldn’t exactly control myself either, so I knew how he felt.

But I’d summoned him? Impossible. How could I have summoned him growing up? Like that time I was four and I was almost kidnapped by a convicted child molester? I didn’t even know what he was. I’d been scared of him.

Just then, I heard my front door crash open and decided it was time to clean up anyway. Coffee never felt as good on the outside.

“What? Where are you?” I heard my neighbor who moonlighted as my receptionist and best friend say as she stumbled into my apartment. Cookie’s short black hair stuck out in all kinds of socially unacceptable directions. And she wore wrinkled pajamas, striped in alternating blues and yellows that fit tight around her robust middle half with long red socks that bunched around her ankles. She was such a challenge.